The Taming of the Shrew

Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Taming of the Shrew

his play can be dated after 1579 and any It was followed by a reprint in 1596: time up to 1598. [Q2, 1596] P.S., sold by Cuthbert Bertie T Two more anonymous editions followed in 1607. Publication Date The first was entered in the register to Nicholas Ling at the same time as Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrewwas published for the Love’s Labour’s Lost, indicating a clear connection first time in the First Folio (F1) of Shakespeare’s with Shakespeare. The play was published in F1 as plays in 1623. That version is commonly referred The Taming of the Shrew, occupying the eleventh to as The Shrew to distinguish it from its supposed position among the comedies, coming after As You ‘source’, a play called The Taming of a Shrew which Like It and before All’s Well That Ends Well. The was published anonymously. 1631 quarto of The Shrew derives the text from F1 and attributes the play to Shakespeare. Publication of the Anonymous The relationship between the anonymous ‘A Shrew’ A Shrew (1594) and Shakespeare’s The Shrew (1623) has been vigorously debated over the years. On 2 May 1594 there was entered to Peter Short Thompson explains the choice of theories: in the Stationers’ Register: a) A Shrew is the original play, by an unknown writer, and the direct source of the [SR, 1594, A Shrew, anon] Secundo die Maij. Shakespeare play (as suggested by Peter Shorte. Entred vnto him for his copie Chambers); vnder master warden Cawoodes hande, a b) The Shrewis the original play and A Shrew booke intituled A plesant Conceyted historie is a memorial reconstruction by an actor called The Tamynge of a Shrowe vjd or some other person of the Shakespeare play, i.e. a ‘bad quarto’ (as argued by The play was published later that year: Alexander and Dover Wilson, Morris, Miller and Oliver); [Q1, 1594, A Shrew] A Pleasant Conceyted c) both Shrews derive from a lost original which Historie, called The Taminge of a Shrowe ... was Shakespeare’s first version of the sundry times acted by the Right honorable play (Houk). the Earle of Pembroke his servants Printed at London by Peter Short and are to Despite the close resemblance in structure be sold by Cuthbert Burbie, at his shop at the between the two plays, the language in A Shrew is Royal Exchange. 1594 far less Shakespearean, though not totally without This version of the play contains about 1480 lyrical touches. It has been claimed by some (e.g. 1 lines, shorter than most quartos attributed to Chambers ) that the poetic moments sound more Shakespeare (see Oliver). A single copy of this like Marlowe or Peele than like Shakespeare. edition, held at the Huntingdon Library, survives. However, Stephen Miller’s detailed comparison of

Title page to the anonymous first quarto ofThe Taming of a Shrew, 1594; it has generally been believed that this play was by another author but some scholars have argued that it was an early version by Shakespeare, which he later revised. By permission of Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, shelfmark Facs. e.29, title page.

the texts leads him to conclude that The Shrewis a combination of them, when the two companies the original play and A Shrew is an inferior version were ‘exiled’ there from 3 to 13 June: Henslowe of it. indicates the performance dates of seven plays but not the performers. However, when they returned Performance Dates to the Rose playhouse the following week, the Admiral’s Men continued to present three of the Newington plays, but A Shrew was not one On 11 June 1594 a performance of ‘the tamyng of A of them. So Rutter confidently assigns A Shrew shrowe’ at the Newington Butts theatre is recorded to the Chamberlain’s Men (along with the other in Philip Henslowe’s diary. It is not immediately three plays, which included Titus Andronicus apparent whether it was performed by the Lord and Hamlet). According to Thompson, “it seems Admiral’s Men, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, or

© De Vere Society 2 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Taming of the Shrew clear... that both Pembroke’s men and the Lord identities with his servant and disguises himself Chamberlain’s Men had Shrew plays in their as a music teacher in order to woo Kate’s younger respective repertoires by 1594.” sister, Bianca. This exchange causes a number of The next recorded performance took place at comic misunderstandings. Court on 26 November 1633. The recognised source of this plot is the play Supposes, an English translation, by George Sources Gascoigne, of Ariosto’s Italian play Suppositi. Gascoigne simultaneously used Ariosto’s two Both Shrew plays comprise three elements woven versions – the original was in prose, the second together. in verse. These in turn were based on Amphytruo, a Latin comedy by Plautus. The Supposes was 1) The frame. A lord discovers a drunken performed at Gray’s Inn in 1566 as part of the tinker passed out on the ground and, as a jest, has winter holiday entertainment of 1566–7, although his retainers bring him indoors. When the tinker the translation was not published until 1573; it wakes up, they convince him that he is a great lord, was republished in 1587. Gascoigne retained all who has just recovered from a spell of madness in Ariosto’s characters and their Italian names. which he believed himself to be a lowly tinker. While both Shrew plays take the characters, As Thompson points out, such a story is found scenes and plot devices of The Supposes for their in many times and places, including the Arabian sub-plot (the wooing of the younger sister), they Nights. Close in time to Shakespeare, Heuterus’s are used less fully and to less effect in A Shrew De Rebus Burgundicis, published in 1584, has the than in The Shrew. In A Shrew, some of the Duke of Burgundy playing the trick, including the characters and their plot elements are eliminated performance of a comedy. In A Shrew the tinker, and two individuals are divided into pairs. The Slie, is intended to remain on stage throughout; in author of A Shrew gives Kate two sisters, but The The Shrew, once the play begins, no more is heard Shrew gives her only one (neither Ariosto nor his from Sly and he can stay on stage or vanish at the translator gives his girl any). director’s whim. The female protagonist in both plays is ‘Kate’; 2) The main plot. A “merry, madcap lord”, otherwise there is two different sets of names Petruchio, comes to town to get a wealthy bride, for most of the characters. Curiously, The Shrew woos and weds the feisty Kate and by various went back to Supposes for the name of the servant means succeeds in ‘taming’ her. He prevents her ‘Petruchio’ (added to Ariosto’s play by Gascoigne), from eating, sleeping, choosing her own clothes and bestows it on his male protagonist in The or having a say on anything. The techniques Shrew. Among other sources sometimes proposed described are similar to those used to train hawks. are the works of Plautus (providing the names Finally, Kate, realising that it is more important Grumio and Tranio), and writings on falconry by to this man that he have her public allegiance Gervase Markham such as Country Contentments, than that his own public image should remain usually dated 1611, but probably earlier; Markham spotless, capitulates in order to bring peace. was writing prolifically from c. 1590 and was Uniquely among Shakespeare’s works, this plot commended by Meres in 1598. seems to have been derived more closely from an oral tradition than from any previous written Orthodox Date work, ancient or contemporary. Folklore specialist Brunvand amply demonstrates that it is based on The range of dates proposed for the (Shakespeare) an old tale common to all the nations of Europe, play is 1589 – 94. Chambers fixed on 1593–4 and even some in Asia. In his detailed and for Shakespeare’s play, which is followed by the scientific study, he shows how closely Shakespeare Riverside and Signet editions. Halliday preferred followed the Danish version in all but a few 1594. Alexander puts the date of writing before details: Shakespeare softened his version from the 1593, as does Oliver; Wells & Taylor propose folkloric source, in which the abuse of the wife is 1590–93 and Cairncross places it around 1590. far greater. Thompson, also, settles on 1590 as the most likely 3) The sub-plot. Young Lucentio exchanges date. Morris (persuaded by Marco Mincoff’s

© De Vere Society 3 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Taming of the Shrew revision of Chambers’s chronology) proposes original. It remains possible that The Shrew was 1589 and most scholars now favour a date c. among the first of Shakespeare’s plays and dates 1590. However, Wiggins gives limits of 1589– back to 1590. Alternatively, some commentators 92, preferring the latest date. He suggests that think that The Shrew, as it appears in the First perhaps Marlowe or Nashe wrote A Shrew c. 1593 Folio, is a substantially later version. to imitate Shakespeare’s The Shrew. Only three contemporary references have been found to a ‘Shrew’ play, the latest – and Internal Orthodox Evidence least relevant – dated 1609. In 1596 Harrington’s Metamorphosis of Ajax obviously refers to the 1594 Morris states simply that there is no internal printed text of A Shrew: “the book of Taming a evidence for dating the play. Shrew”. The earliest of the three references is the most significant: a 1593 poem by Antony Chute External Orthodox Evidence (Beawtie Dishonoured, also called Shores Wife) includes the line “He calls his Kate, and she Meres does not mention any Shrew play. Some must come and kiss him”. Morris and Thompson commentators have identified it with the conclude that this must refer to The Shrew, in mysterious ‘Love labours wonne’ in Meres’s 1598 which Petruchio twice demands a kiss from list of Shakespearean plays, but Baldwin shows Katherina (5.1 and 5.2); there are no kissing that both A Shrew and Love labours wonne were sequences in A Shrew. to be found in a bookseller’s manuscript catalogue of 1603. Oxfordian Date Morris supports the view that The Shrewis the source of A Shrew, and he conjectures that A Shrew Clark proposes 1579, and Charlton Ogburn Jr. existed before 21 August 1592, the day when the thinks that the 1579 play A Shrew “might” be an actor Simon Jewell (of Pembroke’s company) was early version of The Shrew. Holland regards The buried. The evidence is somewhat flimsy, but A Shrew as not by Oxford and dates it to 1598. Hess Shrew has the stage direction ‘Enter Simon ... ’; no et al. opt for 1582 and “not later than 1593”. better explanation has been put forward than that this is the name of the actor – there is no character External Oxfordian Evidence of that name. So we have a latest date of early 1592 for The Shrew. The many anomalies discerned by scholars in the Thompson notes the previous detail and version published as A Shrew suggest that it was mentions verbal parallels between both Shrew not the first or only version of the play from this plays and A Knack to Know a Knave, performed period. Nor would this be surprising, considering at the Rose playhouse on 10 June 1592. She its curious and ambiguous provenance. If (as some deduces that the anonymous play borrowed from scholars suggest) it was in the possession of at least both, indicating an earlier dating of both plays two troupes, that leaves room for alterations of all – The Shrewbeing the first to be performed. She kinds. affirms The Shrew’s affinities with the earliest Clark holds that the record in the Court Shakespearean comedies, The Comedy of Errors calendar of a holiday play, produced at Richmond and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, particularly Palace by the Children of Paul’s in January 1579 with the former. (Chambers, ES, iv 96, 154), was an early version Thompson’s overall attitude is that Shakespeare of The Taming of the Shrew. However, the title, originally wrote his play, complete with all the Sly A Morrall of the marryage of Mynde and Measure, material, for a large company (possibly the Queen’s offers no clue, and Clark gives no reasons as to Men) either in the season ended by the closing why we should agree. She also suggests that it was of the theatres in June 1592 or in the preceding written for the marriage of Oxford’s sister, Mary season. During the turbulent years 1592–4, two Vere, to Lord Willoughby d’Eresby at about this companies came to possess cut versions of the play, time, on the doubtful basis that Mary had a hot The Shrew, which remains close to the original, temper.2 and A Shrew, a memorial reconstruction of the Oxfordians consider that a number of

Shakespeare’s best plays were written as wedding determination in her long legal battle with entertainments at Court, for families or individuals Oxford’s son-in-law and her own brother-in-law, with whom he had a particular bond. As this the sixth Earl of Derby, over property left her in play is about a marriage, and, like several others, her husband’s will. Coward notes that Egerton involves a dénouement in which several couples made frequent complaints about her “biting” are united at the end, Shrew would seem to have tongue. been written for a wedding. Yet, although there is Lord Strange himself was one of the Leicester always a measure of satire in the ‘wedding’ plays, faction at Court. This would suggest a motive the treatment is far more extreme in The Shrew: for Oxford. Strange was a rival both politically Katherine’s hysterical anguish at her situation, and artistically, and his marriage would have Petruchio’s refusal to conform to custom, to dress given opportunity for Oxford to hurl a theatrical appropriately or attend the obligatory wedding gauntlet before him, demonstrating his skill with breakfast, above all his harsh treatment of his what Nashe called his “dudgeon dagger”, the wife – modern opinion would call it abuse – wooden sword of the old comic Vice, the weapon go way above the usual level of provocation. of satire, that brings the mighty to their knees by Moreover, all does not end happily for everyone: making them look ridiculous. the embarrassment of the other newly-weds and Strange is recorded as having a particular Kate’s avowal of submission make this no ordinary weakness for finery. Coward informs us that, at wedding play. his death in 1594 at 36, he left unpaid tailors’ and This writer proposes that a likely point of origin shoemakers’ bills of £6000! The comic business for The Shrewwas the Stanley–Spencer wedding between Petruchio and his tailor and haberdasher of 1579. According to the book by Barry Coward, (4.3) suggest a satire on this weakness. Strange’s twenty-year-old Ferdinando Stanley married the taste for expensive horses is also recorded by Sir wealthy heiress Alice Spencer. Stanley, or Lord John Harrington, and might have prompted the Strange as he was known for most of his adult life, creation of Petruchio’s broken-down old nag. became involved in the world of Court theatre. Stone records his enthusiasm for hawking, which He began by sponsoring tumbling acts for the could have encouraged the extended metaphor winter holiday entertainment in 1579–80, and in which methods for taming a hawk are used to continued to support such Court activities, plus tame a wife. a successful acting company, for most of the ’80s The Taming of the Shrewcontains significant and into the ’90s. Himself a poet of no mean further names. In the Induction scene, Sly is ability, he was praised by most of the leading poets informed that he must call his wife ‘Madam’, to of the day for his generous patronage of the arts. It which replies “Alice madam or Joan madam?” In was his company, Lord Strange’s Men, that made 4.1, Petruchio calls for his cousin “Ferdinand ... Christopher Marlowe famous in the late 1580s. one, Kate, that you must kiss and be acquainted Stanley’s bride, Alice Spencer, was the youngest with”; and there is plentiful use of the word of the eight daughters of Sir John Spencer of ‘strange’. Finally, the character of the formidable Althorp in Northamptonshire. He made a fortune Alice, and the fact that everyone was certain the both by raising sheep for the wool trade and by heavily indebted Lord Strange was marrying her marrying an heiress. He was able to marry several for her dowry, fit this scenario very nicely. daughters into the peerage, espousing them to If a version of the play was inspired by this noblemen in debt. In 1579 Alice topped them particular wedding, it could then have been the one all by marrying Lord Strange. Sir John reached rewritten later for public consumption as A Shrew, the peak of his public prestige when he became but it is likely that the version used a full decade Lord Mayor of London in 1594. The prominence earlier for an educated, noble audience would of both families as patrons of the arts can be seen have been different from that of either extant play: from the many works dedicated to them by such A Shrew, revised for public performance in 1589– writers as Robert Greene, Edmund Spenser and 92, or The Shrew, the final version as we have it in Thomas Nashe. the First Folio, revised some time in the late 1580s Alice was far from being a silent, submissive or early 1600s. The language of A Shrew is similar female. She demonstrated intelligence and in many ways to that of other early anonymous

© De Vere Society 5 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Taming of the Shrew or apocryphal plays that have been pinpointed Notes by scholars with good ears as ‘early Shakespeare’. The ornate touches that have confused scholars Acknowledgement: some statements above, based might not have been an imitation of Marlowe, but on the work of Lawrence Stone and Stephen May, purposeful burlesque of a style that was associated are derived from notes on Lord Strange and the with Marlowe. That these flourishes are confined Spencers taken by Mick Clark and generously to the two foppish suitors for the hand of Kate’s made available. two sisters, suggests that the target audience relished this satirical touch. 1. E. K. Chambers (ES, iv, 48) dates the anonymous The names Shakespeare gives to his characters quarto play A Shrew to c. 1589. He reports can be clues to his real-life models. In A Shrew, that “its date has been placed in or before the Petruchio character is called Fernando – too 1589, because certain lines of it appear to be Menaphon similar to Ferdinand to be disregarded, while parodied both in Greene’s of that year, and in the prefatory epistle to Menaphon one of the two sisters is called Emilia, suggesting by Nashe”. Chambers (WS, i, 322–8 ) is very a possible connection with Emilia Bassano, unsure about the relationship between the the Italian–Jewish court musician whom some plays, Shakespeare’s possible authorship of commentators (Rowse, Lasocki, Hughes), the anonymous quarto and the dates of each believe was the Dark Lady of the Sonnets. play. He gives a balanced discussion, reporting During the period in question, Emilia Bassano the alternative view of Peter Alexander and J. was the mistress of the Lord Chamberlain, Dover Wilson. Henry Hunsdon, patron of Shakespeare’s acting 2. The couple were married between Christmas 1577 and March 1578. For details of the engagement company. His oldest son, Sir George Carey, was and dowry arrangements, see Nelson, 172–9. married to Elizabeth Spencer, Alice’s older sister. These connections would support the idea of the play being a fierce satire on Oxford’s peers which, Other Cited Works while tolerable to the insulated Court community, would be another matter when it passed into the Alexander, Peter, Shakespeare’s Life and Art, London: James Nisbet, 1939 repertories of public acting companies. Anderson, Mark, “Shakespeare” by Another Name, New York: Penguin, 2005 Conclusion Blakemore Evans, G. (ed.), Riverside Shakespeare, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997 The play can be dated after 1579 and any time Brunvand, J. H., The Taming of the Shrew: a up to 1598 (even though it was not mentioned comparative study of oral and literary Versions, by Meres) as it is universally taken to be an early New York: Garland, 1991 Bullough, Geoffrey, Narrative and Dramatic Sources comedy. The date of the first version could be of Shakespeare, vol. II, London: Routledge and as early as 1579 with a date for a revised version Kegan Paul, 1958 1590–1, when Lord Strange first appears in the Cairncross, A. S., The Problem of Hamlet – a Solution, Court Calendar. As for the F1 version, its high London: MacMillan, 1936 polish suggests a rewrite in the late 1590s. Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols, This play may have been written originally as a Oxford: Clarendon, 1923 ‘roast’, to tease two socially powerful young people Chambers, E. K., William Shakespeare, A Study of in the privacy of their family and community circle Facts and Problems, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon, 1930 at the time of their marriage. This would help Clark, Eva Turner, Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s (in my view) to explain what is often perceived Plays, New York: Kennikat, 1931 rptd 1974 by modern audiences as disturbing misogyny. Coward, B., The Stanleys, Lords Stanley and Earls Although anger had its role in later versions, the of Derby, 1385–1672, London: Sidgwick & origin of The Taming of the Shrewmay have been Jackson, 1985 no more than an hilarious practical joke. Halliday, F. E., A Shakespeare Companion 1550–1951, London: Duckworth, 1952 Hess, W. R., et al. “Shakespeare’s Dates”, The Oxfordian, 2, Portland, 1999 Holland, H. H., Shakespeare, Oxford and Elizabethan

Times, London: D. Archer, 1933 Rowse, A. L. (ed.), The Poems of Shakespeare’s Dark Houk, Raymond A., “The Evolution ofThe Taming of Lady, New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1979 the Shrew”, PMLA, 1942: 1009–38 Rutter, C. C., Documents of the Rose Playhouse, Hughes, S. H., “New Light on the Dark Lady.” Manchester: MUP, 1999 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter 36.3, 2000 Stone, L. The Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558–1641, Lasocki, D. and R. Prior, The Bassanos: Venetian Oxford: Clarendon, 1965 musicians and instrument makers in England, Swan, G. “The Woman’s Prize, A Sequal to The Taming 1531–1665, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995 of the Shrew”, The Oxfordian, 10, Portland, May, S. W., The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: the poems 2007, 121–141 and their contexts, Columbia: University of Thompson, A. (ed.), The Taming of the Shrew, Missouri Press, 1991 Cambridge: CUP, 1984 Miller, S. R. (ed.), ‘The taming of a shrew’: the 1594 Wells, Stanley & Gary Taylor (eds), William quarto, Cambridge: CUP, 1998 Shakespeare: The Complete Works, Oxford: Mincoff, M., Shakespeare, the First Steps, Sofia: OUP, 1986 Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1976 —, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, Morris, B. (ed.), The Taming of the Shrew, London: Oxford: OUP, 1987 Arden, 1981 Wiggins, Martin (ed.) British Drama 1533–1642: A Nelson, Alan, Monstrous Adversary, Liverpool: LUP, Catalogue: Volume II: 1567–1589, Volume III: 2003 1590–1597. Oxford, OUP, 2013. Ogburn, Charlton, The Mysterious William Shakespeare, Wilson, J. Dover (ed.), The Taming of the Shrew, Virginia: EPM, 1984 Cambridge: CUP, 1968 Oliver, H. J. (ed.), The Taming of the Shrew, Oxford: OUP, 1999